So, stepping away for a moment from the more creative aspect of my writing, I’m just going to vent a moment.

Naturally, as things get to going in forward direction, something happens that causes me to gather the blue back around me. For my family, I’m sorry. You don’t deserve my frustration, and at times I find it hard to control.

Things are going great really. I am fulfilling my dream of sight with an appointment for a Visian implant to fix my vision. I am about to start my practicum and not only get experience, but see the halfway mark in my journey to possibly incredible happiness (or at least a really fun, new adventure). And I have taken matters into my own hands in order to continue the line of my beloved dog through puppies. So many dreams coming to a culmination. And yet, I find myself in a hizzy last night. As cool and collected as I am at work, and as much as I pretend I have everything together, I can be a mess at times.

And why, you ask? I suppose it’s very similar to where I was almost seven years ago. Desperate for a way out of my lovely life because I was feeling so lost and alone and misunderstood that I was willing to end that life altogether. The difference now being that I’ve grown out of that time when I thought death would fix things. Doing things fixes things, not giving up. And doing things has done me a great service in growing myself and getting me to this point in my life. But that bleak feeling is a beast I still haven’t conquered all the time.

So, I went to a concert this past Friday. Andy Grammar. BEST concert I have ever been to. I’ve seen the lights and the fireworks and the even the acoustics of Red Rocks. But I have never seen an artist so in love with his work. The venue was perfect, and very intimate in a way because it was smaller than normal venues. I watched in blatant awe as he played a selection of instruments and even did a little beatbox, singing in perfect tune and interacting with us like he had been here countless times before. But more than that, why he was really good, was the way he sang. I have his music. He’s on the radio and when I first heard his voice on that download years ago, I loved the sound. He’s grown since then, as have I. But watching him do it, being there in person, was…magic. The fun songs are full of energy and you can’t help but get excited. But his deeper songs, my God. You can FEEL them. Every emotion, every strand of hurt or wonder or love. It made you wish every song was about you. That you could make someone feel and sing and express himself like that because of you. His voice penetrates in such a beautiful and daring way that you perk up and listen. I can’t explain it. It went into me. It was amazing and invigorating. A true artist. A legend in his own right.

That night was like an adrenaline rush. I felt so invigorated after the performance and happy as if anything was possible. And then something twisted, like when you bend the wrong way and strain yourself. That thought, unbidden, returned. It didn’t even voice itself really, I just felt something was wrong. Unable to let things go, I sat and tried to analyze it. By the time I figured it out I was full blown mad at myself for letting the blue back in and the weak feelings return after a while being fine. I guess it’s a learning process and I shouldn’t be so hard on myself. But I can’t help but feeling badly for feeling like I might need something when I have so much. I want love. Not just any love but the right love. I’ve been alone for almost two years now. Not even a sniff of anything real. I want someone who sings those songs about me. Who can feel so deeply that his voice might carry it. I long for someone to share myself with and build a life with and speak to about my secret feelings. My family is so amazing and we are building in our own future together. But there’s that hole there. Little, like a snag in a sweater. Some little thing you keep messing with and is at the back of your mind all the time. Do I need to fix the tiny hole? Need is a big word. I do need it in a way, but I’m good alone too. Strong and capable and good. I want to fix it. I want to feel like my sweater is seamless and stronger than it had been.

The closer I get to thirty, the more I feel as if the tick of a clock is getting louder. I feel my life becoming a Lifetime special, or else I’m becoming a confirmation of a societal stereotype about the modern woman who breaks the secret code of life’s order. Everyone keeps talking about freedom as the kids get older. That I’ll only be in my early forties by the time they’re grown. But to me, that seems so far away. That seems so much older than I want to be when I have time to find someone special. But what’s your option when you have your kids alone and young? I’m not finding someone for just me. I’m finding US a special someone. And that worry is very real.

There’s a worry for single mothers. About finding the right someone to not only be a partner but a model for children. That the love you find will be the example for how they pick their own partners. And how can we accomplish this? How can we bridge the Grand Canyon?

I wonder where God is in all this. I feel so alone sometimes, yelling up in vain on a silent tongue. I feel at times as if I let him down. I had a ton of potential and I squandered it on men, and got responsibility as my reward. It was what I needed at the time though. I needed something to make me make decisions and get up out of bed when I just wanted to die. I probably wouldn’t be where I am today if it hadn’t been for birthing two little responsibilities. I would have taken longer to wake up, to fight for what was right, to ask for what I needed. He knew what I needed. Those kids saved my life.

At this point, I suppose it’s a waiting game. I need to grow myself and learn as much as I can in the interim. I will have to try to not find myself down, and if I do get down then to pick myself up more quickly every time. Waiting is no easy task. But if I can find the kind of love hiding in Grammar’s voice, then it will be worth it. It hurts so badly some nights, but many woman have it worse. I was one of them once.

On the bright side, this venting helps. And the darkness has faded to blue. Back to the drawing board. And the bed so I can forget it all for a few hours.

Goodnight all.

Dear you,

I am sitting here and wishing it wasn’t without you. I’m sitting here and wishing I could turn to you and get your opinion, your comfort, or show you something funny. I wish I could tell you how much you mean to me. How much I need you here to understand me. I want to talk to you about my crazy theories about the stars or books or the spectrums of the mind. I want to hear your darkest secret or about that time you felt the dark creeping up against you. I want to hear how much you love pasta or ravens or first person shooter games. I want to laugh about that time we fixed the sink together and got all wet and laid on the bathroom floor joking about the gnomes in the pipes. I need your touch. I need you to tell me that everything will be okay and that it’s alright that I ate cream puffs for dinner simply because I didn’t feel good. I need you to tell me I’m beautiful when I need a shower. I need you just to talk to me about nothing or rub my back. I’m sorry I’m so emotional during certain times, when the memories return and I can’t stop the tears. I’m sorry I hate washing dishes. I’m sorry I don’t know how to act when it comes to a “normal” relationship, I’ve had to be the “man” so long I don’t know how to do anything else.

But most of all. I love you. And I miss you. And I am praying everyday for the man you are and the man you need to be. I’m doing my best to grow everyday to become the woman you need for us to be just as great as we are in my head. I want to be capable of doing whatever it takes, and I know I am. I am waiting for you. And I’ll be looking out the window for you to come.

I wonder how far away love grows. I wonder what green earth it does spin. A thousand tiny vines like veins plumping under the dirt and driving themselves on to some heart, some life. They pump, grow, wind through the strength and hardness of life. They carry the life blood, love’s sweet song. A melody as tiny and silent as blood rushing in those thread-like peripherals, worms burrowing underground. They travel. Twisting, carrying themselves around and through. The white bone trunks pushing up and away to the heavens, warm within their evergreen grasp.

I wonder how far love goes. Does it cover an alien earth, somewhere where the green has overtaken? Where love is true and absolute? This wrapped and tangled womb of heartbeat and rebirth. The replication of miniature branches, netting, knitting themselves into a blanket of ease and knowing and contentment. Oh the wonder of love. A forest so dense. A sky so infinite. A river so wide. I wonder where the veins travel. Do they bring the love to my heart? Or do they carry it away? Does my love age within their midst; or is it my love that ages those delicate creatures of beat and warmth?

What daydreams are these? Warm and dizzy in the sun of a sleepy afternoon. The dandelions float around in the honey warmth. I lay in the grass and listen, listen to their slow trails through the air. The soft hum as they part the breeze. Every sound, every tickle of their fuzz like lighting against my skin. They careen around me and I am surrounded alone. I lay within magic. I lay within forever. The cool, emerald grasses. The tall, full trees. The lazy meander of dust. I lay there and dream of hands holding mine, a whisper in my ear, a heartbeat under my cheek.

There’s no forgiveness in my bones. No beauty. No regret. Only this deep growing, needing. Curling vines towards the sky. Love grows very far I think. Love grows to the heavens and back, like some fairytale beanstalk. It carries love down from that place of light and bolded sounds. It carries the bundle it made; a cocoon; an egg. Drenched in vine. Wrapped in impenetrable green. Held in the hand like a newling. Grown to the height of the stars. How dizzy we are from that high place, falling so swiftly we may faint with such complete rapture. The thought of flying. The picking of a guitar. The quiet of a new dawn still damp with dew and chill.

If love is anything, it is the one thing that grows without our permission. Hope must be believed, happiness is conditional, and truth is cultivated. But love. Sweet love. It is grown and keeps growing without our consent. It is a live thing that cannot be seen, as a tree or a daisy can be. It is seen through the shimmer of an eye, the touch of a hand, the smile of a lover. Love is alive within us. It is a moss on the surface of our stone hearts, plush and constant. It is a warm blanket on a cold morning. It is truth among lies. It is. It is alive.

This is how far love grows, I think. This is where love recedes. Only into the deep reaches of the heart, or else grown tall to an unknown celestial seat of moon and suns and the spinning of a thousand other days. This is how far away it is. So far you must search, so close you can touch it within your bosom if you wished. This is how large love is. So small you must whisper, so big you must be heard and shout. This is why. Because it is the deepest need we own, so foreign and yet so ordinary that it has been stolen from others lips. Because it demands to be known, to be felt, in order to be human. In order to find and know our place in this world. In order to touch the beyond and have it speak back to us.

“I have heard you. I know you. I love you. Come.”

And we grasp that beyond with both hands, hoping and trying. We can grasp love. We can touch it.

So, tonight I was home. Watching a movie in hopes of ignoring the cacophony outside from the torrential rain and hail that greeted the dark as the sun went down.

Little comments, little woes seeped out of me as I watched, trying with all my might to just be blank and open. I try to do that a lot. I can’t say I’m proud of it, I’m not the person to not feel something, so when I border myself in I feel off.

Still, days pass and often that’s how I get through and around emotions that get me no where and thoughts that make me cry or yell at my mom with things like “You know how you get over it everyday? The truth is, you don’t. You don’t cry, you don’t feel, and you suck it up” (Which was my statement not a few weeks ago). I disturbingly and disappointedly acted as a five-year-old who gets pushed in the dirt and scrapes her knee–emotionally disturbed and all but incapable of rational thought.

I digress.

So, tonight I’m sitting there doing my thing..,and the words in the movie come to life for me.

She was scared. Scared that if she went back to being who she was, doing what she did in any way before, that it meant she wasn’t sorry. That she didn’t feel or have regret.

Perhaps that’s what I’ve been doing all this time.

I realized the other day (in a post I didn’t publish for fear of sounding as ridiculous as I do in my own journal) that I was scared. I was hiding. Hiding from a past, forcing myself to relive it. I felt like I couldn’t get back the person I had been when I was younger, exuberant in my discovery of a beautiful eureka called “love”. I do realize that that playfulness is gone right now. Perhaps dormant, perhaps purged, I don’t know. That joy and silliness and awe at intimacy I felt is all but a memory. I’ve picked the wrong people. Been hurt by the wrong people. And as nature does, I adapted. Unfortunately in the wrong way.

I do hope we meet again, myself and I. And that we can recount the lost days and bring back the good again. The good I keep away for fear of a constant crying, or hurt, or vulnerability. I’m too old to cry like that anymore. At least that’s what I tell myself so I don’t do it. I won’t let him ruin my life. I won’t let him inadvertently control all my tomorrows.

So, tonight I realized that maybe I was forcing myself to be “mean” to me. That I felt like if I didn’t keep punishing myself. If I didn’t keep blaming myself. That if I didn’t keep reliving everything and every word that happened…that it meant I didn’t care. That I wasn’t sorry and that I hadn’t changed. I have. I am.

It’s a scary place to not trust yourself anymore. And an even scarier thing to not know your own self. I keep saying in a lot of posts lately that “maybe I was feeling ___.”. And unfortunately that’s the best I can do right now. It’s as if I am two people. One who protects the other depending on situations. As if I keep my own thoughts from myself at times. Sounds stupid, I know. Or like I’m some retarded lackey.

I have to stop. Stop forcing myself to replay things. To stop imagining–and succeeding at times–in punishing myself. I have to realize that what’s past is past. Period. Just because I don’t constantly remind myself of my faults and bad decisions, doesn’t mean I’m not sorry. Doesn’t mean I won’t or haven’t changed. Just because I go back to being happy; Just because I let myself be the open, sweet girl I was before; Just because I set myself free doesn’t mean I don’t see everything, that I don’t regret, that I’m not different.

Sometimes when you lose, you win. I lost a lot of things these past years. Hopes and dreams, freedoms and feelings. But I also gained a lot. Knowledge, wisdom, patience. Sacrifice and bravery. I learned through experience that sometimes when you win, you lose. And in that gained the understanding that in that loss there is also a winning of a greater kind. A winning of spirit.

So, everyone. Don’t be afraid. It’s okay to let go. Really let go. It doesn’t mean you’re weak, though you may be gloriously vulnerable to the beauty of life. You may be in danger, but if you are then it’s the danger of truly finding yourself and loving yourself. Don’t keep yourself caged. It’s okay to be free and understand your limitation. To understand that you fell down and now can get back up. That’s the beauty of it all. You’ve already messed up your second chance? Ha. Let’s wait ’til you stop growing and learning from mistakes and then we’ll call it messed up. Okay?

The thousand drops of rain beat against my sore heart. My emotions suddenly exposed under the covered safety of clouds. A well of water grows inside me, a bubbling, a spurt of raw energy sprawling down my face.

I can’t help but think on things unbidden. On you, your touch a fire that lights and licks up my skin. I am aflame. Your smell like summer, kissed and golden. I am entranced. Your eyes bright and staring. I am frozen.

Oh how the sun loves you. Oh how the wind speaks your name. Oh how the earth longs for your touch.

I am a deer in your sights, an arrow deftly piercing me. The sweet supple damper of skin. The red fruit of flesh. Bite into me, feed on my wetness. I give in, silk in your arms, laying soft and twisted.

How much time between our meeting? How much longer will I be standing in this foothold, this trapped place; So free to go forward and so held back?

My path stretches forward, a blackness. My love extending out like thin slips of light, disappearing into the deep. My heart cries out, afraid for its life. Afraid and wanting to reach towards the end so far away. My hands feel bound. The light from that thin crack burns, like something alive.

The beast inside me rises, eyes focused, so unlike “me” at this juncture. Ears move forward, listening for the sound of your heart. Nose twitches, scenting for the arrival of a presence. The forest beats soft, a clamor of leaves and rain. A shadow on the green earth, a slip of night.

And yet.

I am alone.

The silence proceeds and follows. The soft drum of a single heart. The piercing screech of the quiet in my ears. The rain my only company. Hope comes and goes like punctuation in a strange sentence, my words the melody to an unfinished song.

Where have you gone, my love? Off speaking to world into being? Where have you taken my heart? I long to hear it leap at your touch. How could time have passed so slowly and solemnly? How could you stay away so long?

Oh no, sweet maiden. Our brother has not come this way, his wings extend to the horizon. Perhaps the sun.

Answer me to my pleasure. Dear swift one, fox, I love my winged boy. Does he run in your woods?

Oh no, my darling. My brother is not here. He has gone to the sea, flowing like a flower lost. Perhaps to the bottom.

Give me a bleached moon to sit upon, and write my story. Each tear will fall as a star, twinkling and shining. Each cry, a mere shape of the cloud.

I will sail and caress the sky in my passage, a delicate arch of the back as smooth as limber dawn. I will float upon the black river of night in my whitened boat, bobbing. A hand in the water, drawing ripples for the milky way. I will leave my paw prints upon the surface of the sphere, paces of loneliness and ache.

It is not that I wish someone to wear my mark or to hold my hand, lover.

No.

I wish for only you.

Forsaken is the past, they were all jokers and thieves. I look to you, and you angle your head to me. If only you were here. I am half a whole. I am broken. Discarded. Empty. Please touch me with your outstretched arm. Let me know you’re there. Let me know you know. A comfort. A joy. A coming so soft and quiet, I can’t hear it. I don’t suspect it. And perhaps I am afraid to. For the truth would surely be more forbidden and horrible than the lie of truth my heart might believe. To know and to not know is my curse. A bone jointed in the wrong place, mid-transformation, afraid to become wholly believing.

And yet, sometimes in my darkness, I seek to hear an inkling of you. Some word. Some whisper. One word from you would forever silence my cry. One word would allow me to have peace, in life and in death. It is my wanting. It is my weeping. It is my cry. It is my leap. My hole. And my vision.

It is a rainy day, lover. It is a rain so strong in its weakness. And I miss you.